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DOI: 10.1177/0047117882007004031982 7: 2167International Relations

F.S. NorthedgeThe Falkland Islands: Origins of the British Involvement

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THE FALKLAND ISLANDS:

ORIGINS OF THE BRITISH INVOLVEMENT

F. S. NORTHEDGE

IT is a sad reflection on the nature of international affairs, and of

the human beings whoconductthem, that for almost three months

in the earlysummer

of 1982Britain and

Argentina,two

countrieswhich had everything to gain from friendly relations, were for all

practical purposes at war with each other, at no inconsiderableloss of life and expenditure of resources on both sides, over the

possession of a group of poor and rocky islands in the SouthAtlantic. No-one could seriously suggest that the Falkland Islandshad any more than minimal economic or strategic importance;such efforts as were made to prove that they had looked like

desperate attempts to pour some rationality into a struggle over

inconsequental things. Both Britain andArgentina have substantialeconomic, and perhaps, inArgentinas case, political, problems ontheir hands, to which all their energies in any rational worldshould be directed. Yet, for a time something impossible to

describe except as a sense of national honour, entangled with ahost of folk memories, herd feelings, sentiments, made the affairone ofextreme importance to both states. How long residues ofthenational fervour which swept through Britain during those summermonths will remain, how far the Falklands campaign will have

long-term effects on British life and affect the currents of our

thinking about foreign policy and defence strategy, is impossibleto say.

The fact remains that the British operation to recover theFalklands and the outlying dependency of South Georgia aftertheir seizure byArgentina in March and earlyApril proved to be abrilliant success, both in terms of cool political management andsheer technical excellence.After so many setbacks and disappoint-ments since the Second World War, the island race showed that itwas still capable of performing feats on a parwith those immortalised

by Shakespeare. Partly no doubt because of Prime MinisterThatchers combative personality, partly because the struggle torecover the islands inevitably aroused in Britain a strong pro-tectiveness towards 1,800 somewhat romanticised folk threatened

by a not too tender-minded military regime in Buenos Aires,British sovereignty over the Falklands ended by being moreforcefully asserted than it had been before, and sovereignty, as the

Foreign Secretary, Mr Francis Pym, said in the Commons on 4May, was at the heart of the issue and dispute.After all, for a1 23 H.C. Deb. 6th Series Col 25.

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decade or more before theArgentinian invasion of the mainislands on 2April, British Foreign and Commonwealth Officeofficials, including senior and junior Ministers, had been talkingwith the Argentinians about future arrangements for the Falklands,and Falkland Island councillors were often included as part ofthe

British delegation. Such arrangements, if they did not exactlycontemplate a transfer of sovereignty toArgentina, suggestedenough of a move in that direction to arouse fears amongsupporters of the Falklands connection in Westminster that

something on those lines was afoot. Even during the negotiationsinvolving Peru and the United Nations Secretary-General asintermediaries which accompanied the despatch of the Britishtask force to the SouthAtlantic, formulae were passed to and frowhich assumed some dilution of British control in the form of a

negotiated interim administration pending a definitive settlement.In Parliament, the Government were urged to consider suchsolutions as a lease-back arrangement, or a multinational form of

administration, or a trusteeship under the United Nations. Butnow it seems that the British Government will accept nothing lessthan the full assertion of its sovereignty over the Falklands. I donot intend to negotiate on the sovereignty of the islands in any way,except with those who live there, said Mrs Thatcher in the Houseon 15 June. We need the friendliness of neighbouring States. Wedo not negotiate sovereignty with them.And again: we do notneed to negotiate with the United Nations or anyone else aboutBritish sovereignty of the islands.2

It is important to understand what this means, both for the

present and in the months to come, when the attention of British

people is likely to focus more and more intently on strictlydomestic matters, such as the unemployment problem and the

approaching generalelection.

Althoughfor some time to come the

Argentinians will no doubt be nursing their wounds and examiningthe reasons for their reverse in the Falklands, it seems improbablethat they will abandon their claim to the islands as a lost cause andleave Britain in tranquil occupation of her possessions. They havenourished that claim without much intermission since Britain

assumed control of the islands in January 1833, and although the

intensity ofArgentinian resentment against Britain has variedover the intervening century and a half, there can be little doubtthat, almost without exception, allArgentinians, including perhapssubstantial numbers among the 20,000 or so inhabitants of British

extraction inArgentina, still believe as an incontrovertible truth

2 132 H.C. Deb. 6th Series Cols 734, 738, 741.



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that Las Islas Malvinas belong as of right to that country andshould be under its flag. The same is probably true of the majorityof public opinion in LatinAmerica as a whole, even in countries inwhichArgentina is not otherwise popular. In the United Nations,there may well be more support for theArgentinian case than forthe British.

For these reasons, the cost and inconvenience of holding theFalklands under undivided sovereignty are likely to increase for

Britain, while the resources available to foot the bill will probablyshow a contrary tendency. Clearly, the physical defence of theislands against further trouble-making from the mainland willhave to be furnished on a more effective scale than in the past, and

this at a timewhen the general British defence budget will be underthe most severe strain. British investment in the islands, too, such

as the improvement of the road system, all the more urgent in viewof the dangers from unmapped mines left in the open country by

Argentinian forces, and of the harbour and air strip at Stanley,must be such as to assure the islanders, already a dwindling group

and one shaken by recent events, that there is a future in theislands to look forward to, and at the same time to convince the

world that Britains interest in the Falklands is not simply a matterof wounded national pride, but represents a genuine commitmentto the welfare of the islanders. British politicians, whether inGovernment or Opposition, have frequently stated that the wishesof the Falklanders are paramount in British policy, though it hasnever been quite clear whether this amounts to an admission thatthe 1,800 islanders actually have a veto over that policy. Britain cantherefore hardly evade the responsibility ofshowing, more effectivelyperhaps than in the past, that she is willing and able to satisfy thosewishes more fully than any other candidate for sovereign rights inthe islands.

A great deal is bound to depend, in this forthcoming phase ofthe British connection with the Falklands, on how well this

connection is understood by the British people,who will, when all issaid, have to supply the wherewithal to sustain it, and by the worldat large. How did Britain come to be in those remote, cloudy,wind-swept rocks in the SouthAtlantic 8,000 miles away, and bywhat right does she still claim to be there? What relevance has that

right to the problems faced by the 55 million British people, andwill they consider it relevant as the years pass?No less important isthe question of how strong is Britains title to govern the islandswhen compared with other principles, some of which were

perhaps unknown when the Falklands first came under Britishcontrol and British Ministers first argued the rightfulness of that



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control? One of the difficulties in the discussion of the rights ofexternal countries in the Falklands is that the argument has been

carried on almost exclusively in terms of law and legal entitlement.That is understandable on the British side because lawfavours the

status quo, and Britain is defending the status quo. But, rightly or

wrongly,there are

many peoplein the worldwho are

impressed byother kinds of arguments, and it may be in terms of these that theBritish case must be increasingly voiced ifwe wish to stay in theFalklands.

I

We should begin such a discussion by considering thecharacter of the territories in question, especially as it was only inthe summer of 1982 that most people in Britain became aware ofthe existence of the Falkland Islands and ofwhat and where theywere. The name Falkland is generallyconsidered to be a derivationfrom Falkland Sound, the channel between the two principal landmasses in the Falkland group, which was named by the British

sailor, Captain John Strong, who made the first recorded landingin the islands from the vessel Welfczre in 1690, and this he did inhonour of the third Viscount Falkland,Anthony Cary, who was atthat time a Commissioner, and later First Lord, of theAdmiralty.TheArgentinian name for the islands, the Malvinas, is the

Spanish form of the French name Les Malouines, an echo of StMalo, the port in Brittany from which fishermen and seal huntersset out to exploit the resources of the SouthAtlantic in the earlyeighteenth century. The international flavour of the history oftheFalklands is thus evident even in its nomenclature. It is significantthat West Falkland, where the first English settlement wasfounded in the mid-eighteenth century at the port and fort of

Egmont, was known, even in Britain, as Gran Malvina.The Falklands consist of an archipelago of some 200 islands

and two large islands (only five of the total are inhabited) coveringan area of4,700 square miles, some 300 miles from Patagonia ontheArgentinian mainland and 250 miles from the entrance to theMagellan Straits. The earliest visitors to the Falklands encounteredthem on their way to the Straits and the importance of the islands

originally derived from the facilities they offered for controllingthe famous sea corridor from theAtlantic to the Pacific oceans.

The two largest islands, East and West Falkland, are togetherabout equal in size to Wales.As to the Falkland Islands Depen-dencies, which were brought under the administration of theGovernor in Stanley, the capital, in 1908 (strictly speaking, Port

Stanley is the name of the harbour), these comprise South



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Georgia, the South Sandwich islands, the South Orkneys, theSouth Shetlands, the Graham Land Peninsula,. and a certainnumber of barrenAntarctic islands. Since 1962 the last four

island groups, which, unlike the Falklands proper, South Georgiaand the South Sandwich islands, lie south of 60 degrees South

Latitude,have constituted the BritishAntarctic

Territory.In

theory, theArgentinian claim to the Falklands extends to all theformer Dependencies. In practice, it has concentrated in the last

twenty years or so on the two main islands and South Georgia,which was taken over byArgentinian forces in March 1982, sometime before the invasion of the main islands on 2April. It has been

suggested that this limitation reflects respect for theAntarctica

Treaty signed by 12 states, includingArgentina, in Washington onI December 1959, by which territorial claims in the area south of60 degrees South Latitude were to be held in abeyance.Article IV (2)of the Treaty reads: no acts or activities taking place while the

present Treaty is in force shall constitute a basis for asserting,supporting or denying a claim to the territorial sovereignty in

Antarctica or create any rights of sovereignty inAntarctica. Nonew

claim, orenlargement of existing claim, to territorial sovereignty inAntarctica shall be asserted while the present Treaty is in force.

It is not known with any accuracy what the geologicalpotentialities of the Falkland Islands group are. The maineconomic activities are sheep-rearing (almost all the exports of theislands consist of wool), the exploitation of kelp, a type of seaweedvaluable, among other things, as a source of iodine, fishing andseal hunting. Rumours abound of the untold wealth of the

adjacentAntarctica and of yet untapped offshore oil, but theinvestment needed, even to assess the possibilities, has so far

proved greater than either the British Government or private firmshave been willing to provide. The economic survey commissioned

by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from a committeechaired by Lord Shackleton and published in July 1976 did not

inspire the Government of the day to much energetic action. TheShackleton report contained the chilling words, now forgotten but

presumably still true, thatIt appears to us very unlikely that any exploration programmecan be embarked upon in the offshore Falkland area without

the agreement and co-operation ofArgentina. Indeed it isdoubtful in the extreme that an oil company would accept a

unilateral offer of exploration/production licences by theFalkland Islands government without firm assurance that

3 Cmnd. 913. Parliamentary Papers, Session 1959-60, Vol XVXII, p. 9.



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this was also acceptable to theArgentine. Not only is the

exploration/production expenditure too high to undertakesuch risks but the logistics of an enterprise that avoided

Argentina would probably be economically unattractive.44

The Shackleton committee emphasised that the economic develop-

ment of the islandswas

not only a matter of external assistance;there was also a need for local commitment in the form of actionto reverse the flow of funds from the Falklands and promote the

reinvestment of profits internally.5 The same conclusion wasreached in an up-dated version of the Shackleton report publishedon 14 September 1982, which Mrs Thatcher had called for in May.Nevertheless, the report urged that Britain must spend in excess of100 million over a five-year period to save the islands, protectedby a garrison three times the size of their dwindling population,from economic collapse.6

Suggestions were made during the Falklands campaign thatthe islands might recover their former naval importance (theywere of great value to Britain during the two world wars) if a

collective defence system for the SouthAtlantic were to be formed.No such body seems at present contemplated by the WesternPowers and formidable difficulties would have to be overcome in

launching any such arrangement. Merely to cite one of these, it ishard to see the political problems of associating the Republic ofSouthAfrica with a SouthAtlantic defence system being easilysurmounted, and without SouthAfrican participation the schemewould stand little chance of appearing credible. Taking all thingstogether, the Falklands cannot be realistically regarded as a

precious boon for any external country, evenArgentina, which haswaited to posses them for a century and a half. This does not,

however, in any way affect their emotional significance.

II

On 10 June 1829. the United Provinces of La Plata (ProvinciasUnidas del Rio de la Plata), the laterArgentina, which had broken

away from the mother country, Spain. on 25 May 1810 and haddeclared their complete independence from Spain on 9 July 1816,issued in Buenos Aires. the seat of the government, a decree

asserting their sovereignty over the Malvinas, or the FalklandIslands. Nine years before, on 6 November 1820, a certain CaptainDaniel Jewitt had taken possession of the islands, allegedly on

4 Economic Survey of the Falkland Islands. Prepared by The EconomistIntelligence Unit Ltd., July 1976, Vol I. p. 181.

5 Ibid. Vol II. p. 104.6 The Times, 14

September1982.



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behalf of the United Provinces, informing 50 whalers present inthe islands, including some British captains, that he was doing so.But the 1829 decree seemed to have the full weight of the BuenosAires authorities behind it. It recalled that Spain had held the

imperial possessions of Malvinas and all others which approximate

to Cape Horn, including that known under the domination ofTierra del Fuego, and asserted that the Republic of the UnitedProvinces, having succeeded to every right which the mother

country previously exercised over those Provinces and which its

Viceroys possessed, continued to exercise acts ofDominion in thesaid islands. In case it should be asked why the Republic hadtaken so long to assert its claims, the decree went on to explain thatcircumstances have hitherto prevented the Republic from payingattention to that part of the Territory which, from its importance, itdemands. The circumstances referred to were not specified, butthe likelihood is that they were the Republics war with Brazil,which ended in a coup by the army as a result of its dissatisfactionwith the conduct of the war by the head of the ruling junta, Colonel

Manuel Dorrego, who paid for his failure with his life, and hisreplacement by General Juan Lavall~. If so, it would be an earlyexample of the entanglement of theArgentinian claim to theFalklands with the countrys internal politics.

The decree of 1829 then asserted that the situation had now

changed and that henceforward the islands of the Malvinas andthose adjacent to Cape Horn in the Atlantic Ocean would beunder the command of a Political and Military Governor to benamed immediately by the Government of the Republic, that theGovernor would reside in the Island de la Soledad, or East

Falkland, on which a battery shall be erected under the Flag ofthe

Republic, and that the Governor would cause the laws of the

Republic to be observed by the inhabitants of the said islands and

provide for the due performance of the Regulations respectingSeal Fishing on the Coasts. The Republic then proceeded toappoint a German, Louis Vernet, as Political and MilitaryGovernor. Vernet had been engaged for the three or four previousyears in establishing settlements in the islands.

Britain had recognised the new Republic in 1825,8 but reacted

strongly against the decree. It did so, however, with some little

delay: the British protest was not sent by the Charge dAffaires atBuenosAires, Woodbine Parish, until 19 November (he did not

7 British and Foreign State Papers, 1832-1833. London, 1836, Vol XX (hereaftercited as BFSP), pp. 314-5.

8 C.K. Webster (ed). Britain and the Independence of LatinAmerica 1812-1830,2Vols, O.U.P., London. 1938, Vol I.

pp.133-5.



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have a draft ready until 19August).9 The Parish note did not

appear to controvert the Republics claim to be the successor toSpain as sovereign over islands in the South Atlantic, or the

argument in the decree that Spain was sovereign over the Falklands

by right of being the first occupant, by consent of the principal

Maritime Powers of Europe, and by proximity of those islands tothe Continent which formed the Viceroyalty of BuenosAires, allofwhich pretensions were open to serious objection. Instead, MrParish set forth the classic British thesis to the effect that Britains

rights in the Falklands were founded on original discovery, and

subsequent occupation of the said Islands, which, the notecontinued, acquired an additional sanction from the restoration

by His Catholic Majesty (that is, the king of Spain) of the Britishsettlement in the year 1771, which in the preceding year had beenattacked and occupied by a Spanish force.10 Woodbine Parishsstatement of the British case was reiterated by Viscount Palmerston,the Foreign Secretary, on 8 January 1834, when he replied to theprotest by the Republics Minister in London, Don Manuel

Moreno, against the seizure of the islands by forces from theBritish sloop Clio early in 1833.1 Indeed, it is around theWoodbine Parish presentation of the case that the dispute betweenBritain andArgentina later turned. TheArgentinian counter-argument has been stated, with an immense wealth of scholarship,by anAmerican lawyer, Julius Goebel, in a treatise (no other wordis appropriate) first published in 1927 under the title The Strugglefor the Falklands and reissued with an introduction by ProfessorJ.C.J. Metford by Yale University Press in 1982.

The first principle cited in support of the British claim to

sovereignty in the Parish note of 1829, namely original or first

discovery, cannot be called a sound one. It is true that Englishnavigators were among the first to visit the Falklands. John Davis,commanding the ship Desire, one of a fleet of vessels underThomas Cavendish which sailed from Plymouth inAugust 1591,and from which Davis and his crew were later separated by storms,is recorded as having been driven among certain islands in theSouthAtlantic, which could have been the Falklands, inAugustof the following year. There is evidence, too, that RichardHawkins, after sailing from England in June 1593, sighted theFalklands on 2 Feburary 1594 and called them Hawkins Maiden-land, in honour of Elizabeth I of England. Possibly Sir FrancisDrake, the first sailor to round the Horn, saw the islands. But so

9 FO 6/27, pp. 16-1710 BFSP, Vol XXII, pp. 346-7" BFSP, 1833-1834, London, 1847, Vol XXII,

p.

1384.



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must seamen of other European nations. The renownedAmerigoVespucci and Magellan, who gave their names respectively to theNewWorld and the Straits, could have sightedthem for the first time.The claim of the Dutchman, Sebald van Weert, to be the firstdiscoverer is also strong: his ship, the Geloof, which had leftRotterdam in June

1598,ran out of the

MagellanStraits into the

Atlantic in January 1600 and its crew is credited with havingcharted three islands in the Falklands group, which van Weert

named the Sebaldes.

But much of this lies in the realms of legend and folklore,instruments of navigation and the recording of incidents at sea

being too primitive in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuriesfor authoritative titles to territory to be based upon them. Thecomment of Professor Metford seems a sensible one: an accurate

answer to the question, &dquo;who first sighted the Falklands?&dquo; is

unlikely ever to be forthcoming, and ProfessorMetford is a strongsupporter of the British claim to sovereignty.As he continues,scholars will exercise their ingenuity to explain ambiguous marks

on charts and maps, or to expound tantalising sentences inlogbooks and journals, but it is unlikely that anything positive willresult from their efforts.lz It is in any case doubtful in the extreme

whether a modern international lawyer would attach muchcredence to prior discovery, even if it can be established, as a basisfor the right to sovereignty over territory. Merely to set eyes uponan island before anybody else does so, or even to land on it, can

hardly afford authority to deny access to it or the right ofsettlement on it to others who may come upon the scene later.

According to Grotius, the authoritypar excellence at the time whenthe Falklands first began to appear on maps of the world, todiscover a thing is not only to seize it with the eyes, but to take real

possession of it.13The celebrated treatise ofOppenheim edited by

Sir Hersch Lauterpacht distinguishes between five modes ofacquiring territory (cession, occupation, accretion, subjugationand prescription), but original discovery is not one of them. 14 It

might reasonably be argued, however, that original discoverycould be regarded as one among several indications of a statesinterest in a certain territory, and this without doubt helps tomaintain a claim in international law.

12 Falklands or Malvinas? The Background to the Dispute, InternationalAffairs,July 1968, Vol XVIV No 3.

13 W.S.M. Knight, The Life and Works of Hugo Grotius, Sweet and Maxwell,London, 1925, p. 95.

14 Vol I Peace, 8th edition, Longmans, London, 1955, p. 546.



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Secondly, there is the British claim in 1829 to territorial rightsin the islands by reason of occupation, that is, settlement symbolisedby flying the national flag, the provision of means of defence

against external attack, the building of offices for organising and

maintaining control ofthe territory, and other evidence of a will to

sustainan

official presence oversome

considerable period of time.In this sense, the British claim in the late 1820s was assuredlystronger, though, even so, it could not be represented as exclusive.The first known landing on the Falkland Islands was that of

Captain John Strong, commander of the ship Welfare. whichsailed from the Down on 12 October 1689 and reached the islands

in January 1690. On that occasion Captain Strong did little morethan make a survey and then departed. The first real Europeansettlement was effected by a Frenchman,Antoine Louis de

Bougainville, who had fought with Montcalm at Quebec in 1759and was then given leave by a minister of Louis XV, the Duc deChoiseul, to found a colony of emigrants fromAcadia (NovaScotia) and St Malo on East Falkland. The French Government

considered that, after the loss of Canada to Britain in the SevenYears War(! 756-1763). expansion into the Pacific might serve as a

compensation, and that this might be aided by a footing in theSouthAtlantic. In pursuance of this policy, Bougainville establishedthe harbour of Port Louis in East Falkland in March 1764 in

honour both of his name-saint and his king. The foundations werethus laid for a French colony in the islands.Amonth later

Bougainville claimed possession of all the islands in the name ofLouis XV. The effect was to create lively alarm in Spain, which,along with Portugal, had considered itself the rightful heir toSouth and CentralAmerica ever since the famous Bulls of Pope

Alexander VI of 3 and 4 May 1493 had assigned vast areas of theNew World to the two Catholic Powers for the express purpose of

promoting the Faith.As a result, Charles III of Spain protested toLouis XV, with whom he was allied in the so-called FamilyCompact, and Bougainville was instructed to withdraw his colony,receiving the then substantial sum of E24,000 by way of com-

pensation. The Spanish authorities then assumed possession ofPort Louis, which they renamed Puerto de la Soledad. andinstalled a governor of their own.

There was in European official circles at that time much

uncertainty, both about the character of the Falklands and theextent of settlement, if any, in them, and it seems to have been in

ignorance of the French, and later Spanish, colony that the firstBritish settlement was founded in the western of the two main

islands in 1765. On 23 January of that year, Commodore John



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Byron, the poets grandfather, commanding HMS Dolphin, wentashore on Saunders Island which lies to the north-west of West

Falkland, on the instructions of theAdmiralty, which was lookingfor a suitable harbour to use as a base for further surveys.Commodore Byron then took over Saunders Island and all the

neighbouringislands in the name of

GeorgeIII.

He called theanchorage where he went ashore Port Egmont, after the Earl of

Egmont, at that time the First Lord of theAdmiralty. He then leftbehind his deputy, Captain Macbride, to explore the locality.Macbride came across Bougainvilles settlement at Port Louis andtold the French colonists there to leave since the islands were now

under British rule, after which he left to return home.Ayear later

Macbride was back in Port Egmont with a hundred settlers. The

Spanish authorities in BuenosAires, however, who had by thistime taken over the French settlement at Port Louis, had no wish todeal with a British one.After giving warning to the British party toleave the Falklands, a force of 1,400 soldiers in five ships was

despatched from the mainland to drive out the British settlers. The

British garrisonwas

outnumbered and the Spanish force enteredPort Egmonton 10 June 1770. The later controversy over sovereigntyin the Falklands stems to a large extent from the confusion

surrounding the terms on which Spain at length agreed on 22January of the following year to restore the status quo and handback Port Egmont to British control.

There is therefore no doubt that, by the time the agreementwas reached between Britain and Spain in 1771, the British hadbeen in possession of a definite settlement in the Falklands,though it was in practice limited to the western island and had notexisted for more than four or five years. It was moreover sustained

alongside the residues of a former French presence, which hadfallen into the hands of Spain. In the late eighteenth century the

position of Spain in the SouthAtlantic, at least until it withdrewfrom theAmericas in 1811 as a result of the upheavals in theIberian peninsula associated with the Napoleonic Wars, was

ambiguous, to say the least. Spain, by the authority ofthe Church,claimed to have a proselytising mission in the SouthAmericancontinent and this traditionally extended to islands off the coast.In the negotiations with Britain over the Spanish seizure of Port

Egmont in 1770, the Spanish ambassador in London, Prince deMasserano, always spoke as though Spain had the right to give andwithhold within the Falkland territories, and the British authorities

did not appear to contest this.As we will see later, de Masserano

restored to Britain its use of Port Egmont by an agreementconcluded on the basis that this did not affect

Spanish sovereignty



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over all the Falklands group. Hence, it can hardly be said that theBritish right of sovereignty, in so far as it derived from occupationand settlement, was entirely above question when WoodbineParishs note was despatched to the BuenosAires authorities inNovember 1829.

Britain did maintain, however, that when Port Egmont wasrestored to her control by the 1771 agreement, this signified thatthe Spanish seizure of the port and fort was an offence againstBritish sovereign rights in the Falklands. Dr Goebel, in the studyreferred to, denies this. His argument is that the restitution of Port

Egmont to British control was no more than an act of satisfactionintended to compensate for the use of force against British

possessions, but one which left Spains legal entitlement to the

territory unaffected.The Spanish declaration (Goebel writes) was a mere act ofsatisfaction. The disavowal of Bucareli (the Spanish captain-general in BuenosAires who authorised the raid on Port

Egmont) and the restitution of the colony were two acts

constituting the reparation, and the latter, in view of thereservation of right, was a mere restitution of possession. Itwas an . act by which the physical status quo previouslyobtaining was restored. The question of right, however, wasnot affected by the act ofthe Spanish king, for the reason that,as the negotiation progressed, the English demand had been

sharpened down to satisfaction to the injury to the crownwhich the attack of Bucareli had involved, a claim which ...

was based, not on any violation of territorial sovereignty, but

upon the fact that a royal force had been attacked.15In Goebels interpretation, it is as though Port Egmont wasrestored by theAnglo-Spanish agreement of 1771, not so much as a

possession unlawfully sequestrated, but as a sop to British pride.This is a version of the motives at work, more on the Spanish

than on the British side, which satisfies Dr Goebel because it is in

accordance with his version of the whole transaction. There is

nothing in the relevant documents to suggest that this was thesense in which the restoration ofthe port was understood. True, the

British acceptance of the Spanish act of restitution does state that itwas regarded on the British side as satisfaction for the injury doneto the Crown, but not that this was all it was. The theory of thesettlement being a mere act ofsatisfaction, coupled with Goebelscontention that Britain agreed to the arrangement on the under-

standing that before long she would quit the Falklands for ever,

15

Op.cit.,

p.362.



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implies that Britain was the weaker party in the negotiations withthe Franco-Spanish alliance in the later months of 1770 and hadno alternative but to submit all along the line, provided somegesture was made to save her face. But the opposite was the case, asDr Goebels own account of the crisis in 1770 clearly shows.

The three states involved, Britain, France and Spain, came to thebrink of war over the Port Egmont business. In Britain, Lord Northand his fellow ministers had no wish for war, but at that time,

exactly as in 1982, Parliament would stand for no weakness fromthe Government, the Earl of Chatham, on the Opposition benchesin the Lords, providing an improbable parallel with Oppositionspokesmen in the Commons debate on theArgentine invasion ofthe Falklands on 3April 1982, when they left the Government withno alternative but to send the task force. On a motion ofthe Duke

of Richmond calling for papers, Chatham declared that,Since, for reasons unknown to me, it has been thoughtadvisable to negotiate with the court of Spain, I should haveconceived that the great and single object ofsuch a negotiation

would have been to have obtained complete satisfaction for theinjury done to the crown and people of England. But, if I

.

understand the noble lord (Lord Weymouth), the only objectof the present negotiation is to find a salvo for the punctilioushonour of the Spaniards ... Will you shamefully betray the

kings honour so as to make it a matter ofnegotiationwhetherhis majestys possessions should be restored to him or not? 16

As for France, she had not long before been worsted in the1756-1763 war with Britain and was little disposed to repeat the

experience. Her weight was thrown on the side of restrainingSpain. But it was hardly needed. The British Charge dAffaires inMadrid, James Harris, in an account of the military, naval andfinancial problems facing Spain in September 1770, wrote home toLondon that these ... may be looked upon as much more secure

pledges of peace than any we may infer either from their

protestations or good disposition of those who guide here towardus,17 There is nothing here to suggest that in the early 1770s Britainwas being forced to accept a purely symbolic return to theFalklands, and that the reality was that she was being driven out ofthe islands for ever.

The remarkable feature of the documents exchanged by LordRochford, the Secretary of State for the Northern Department, andPrince de Masserano, for Spain, in the formers office on 22

16 The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803,Vol XVI, 1765-1171 (hereafter citedasParl. Hist.), London 1813, p. 1094.

17 Quoted in Goebel, op. cit., p. 291.



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January 1771, which nullified the Spanish seizure ofPort Egmontin June 1770 and restored the status quo ante, is that they did nottake the form of a single bilateral convention signed by the two

representatives. Much later altercation would have been avoidedhad they done so. Instead, de Masserano made a declaration on

behalf of His Catholic Majesty, the king of Spain, and this wasfollowed by a British acceptance. The Spanish statement beganby referring to the enforced British evacuation of Port Egmont on10 June of the previous year and Spains regret for the incident. It .then undertook that immediate orders would be given that thingsshall be restored in the Great Malouine at the port called Egmont,precisely to the state at which they were before the 10th of June1770, which would include the return ofartillery, stores, effects andBritish subjects who were present when the seizure took place.The second paragraph of the declaration, however, added thecrucial words that this undertakingcannot nor ought in any wiseto affect the question of the prior right of sovereignty of theMalouine islands, otherwise called Falkland islands. 18

Not surprisingly,Argentinian pronouncements about theFalklands from that day to this have given the greatest emphasis tothese final words of the Spanish declaration, though they say nomore than that the sovereignty issue is left unaffected, and

certainly not that the agreement in any way legitimises Spanishsovereignty over the islands. The British acceptance which LordRochford handed over is in large part a repetition of the Spanishdeclaration. but significantly omits the reservation about the

question of sovereignty. It is difficult to construe the two statementsas meaning other than what they say. namely that the restitution ofthe port and fort would be deemed by the two parties as makingamends for the act of violence by the BuenosAires authorities,with no implications for the question of ownership of or sovereigntyover the islands. It is not clear therefore that the agreement of 22

January 1771 can be described as an additional sanction forBritish sovereignty in the Falklands, in the way stated in theWoodbine Parish note almost sixty years later. The Spanish hadattacked a British possession, then said they were sorry for it, andmade a restitution. They did not admit that the British had a rightto have such a possession in such a place to begin with, no morethan the British recognised any Spanish right to determinewhether they did have such a freedom.19

Linked, however, with the question of the interpretation of the

18 BFSP, 1833-1834, Vol XXII, p. 1387.19 Ibid,

pp.1387-88.



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Anglo-Spanish agreements of January 1771 (if indeed agreementsis the right word) is the far more tangled issue of whether, in

completing this transaction, and hence avoiding war betweenthemselves, the two countries also agreed that the British, havinghad Port Egmont restored to them, would shortly evacuate it and,

in so doing, retract all claim to sovereignty over the islands. Theallegation by Dr Goebel that this was indeed done, and thattherefore the British seizure of the islands in January 1833 was

illegal, is consistent with Goebels argument that the restitution ofPort Egmont in 1771 was nothing more than a sop to Britishnational pride. Dr Goebel believes that part and parcel of the

agreement concerning the restoration of Port Egmont was a secret

promise (the title of Chapter VII in Goebels work) given byRochford to de Masserano that the Falklands would without great

lapse of time be abandoned by Britain with permanent effect. He

might have mentioned in support of this contention, but does not

appear to do so, Morenos allegation, when remonstrating withPalmerston about the British seizure ofthe islands in 1833, that an

agreement was actually signed to that effect by Stuart MKenzie,for Britain, and the Secretary of the French ambassador inLondon, a M. Franqois, simultaneously with the exchange of theBritish and Spanish statements about Port Egmont.2o

It is hard to understand, if the MKenzie-Franqois accord everwas actually concluded, why the French should have been party tosuch a transaction (though they were involved in the main

negotiations), or why they should have left such an importantagreement to a relatively minor official. In any case, the Spanishauthorities, if they received a copy of this agreement from theirFrench allies, did not seem to have retained it or passed it on to theUnited Provinces when the Spanish empire in LatinAmericacollapsed. In a lengthy detailed memorandum on the question of

ownership of the Falklands drawn up in the Foreign Office inDecember 1910, Gaston de Bernhardt. without reaching any finalconclusions on the main question, reported that he could not findthe correspondence between Franqois and Mackenzie (Bernhardtsspelling) at the Public Record Office or the British Museum and

suggested that, if it existed, it might be in some private collection.21

Dr Goebel is surely correct in his contention that if. but only if.the British quitted the Falklands in 1774 (as they did) in conformitywith the secret promise, and with the intention of relinquishingthe islands, then British sovereignty, if it ever existed, was

20 Ibid, pp. 1366-82.21 FO 371/824/44753.



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2182 T

terminated and the British armed return to the islands in 1833 was

contrary to law. But, in an otherwise richly documented volume,he produces hardly a particle of evidence that any such undertakingwas ever given. It is extraordinary that a scholar as shrewd asGoebel should base his case for the existence of the secret

promise onan

exchange between George III and de Masserano atthe kings levee on the day following the exchange of declarationsabout Port Egmont, in which the king said that de Masseranowould leam the usefulness of trusting to his (the kings) good faithand the advantages of establishing it between two such great courtsas theirs. De Masserano replied that it was in reliance on this

good faith that the king, his master, had directed him to do what he

had just done, and that his Catholic Majesty would bevery pleasedto learn that his Britannic Majesty had said that they could relyupon his good faith in the treaty. Dr Goebel writes that thesewords were more than mere hollow amenities: they were the

royal ratification of the promises of (Lord) North and his

colleagues that the island was to be abandoned, in reliance upon

which the satisfaction had been given and which remained thegreat question yet to be settled

If the Spanish, after their long experience of British diplomacyand of Great-Power politics in general, really relied upon suchnods and winks as guarantees of their rights, they must have beennaive indeed.At the same time, it has to be admitted that the LordNorth Government in the 1770s, exactly like Labour and ConservativeGovernments in the last twenty years or so, had to tread warily, inview of the strength of Parliamentary feelings, in reaching accom-modations about the Falklands with Spanish orArgentinianrepresentatives. The 1771 agreement was strongly denounced byspeakers in the Commons; in the Lords, Chatham fulminated

against it as an ignominious compromise. It was no satisfaction;no reparation, he said.&dquo; It is not therefore entirely beyond beliefthat Lord North wanted to tell de Masserano that the islands were

not much use to Britain and that she wanted to give them up, butwas in no position to say so openly: his successors in the 1960s and1970s would surely sympathise with him.

When the Government did eventually close down Port

Egmont and withdrew British forces from the islands in 1774, theydid so (another foretaste of the 1980s) for reasons of economy.Lord North gave an explanation of these in a debate in theCommons on the Navy Estimates on 21 January 1774.z~ That there

22Goebel, op. cit., p. 361.

23 Parl. Hist. , Vol XVI, p. 1339.24 Parl.

Hist., Vol XVIII, 1771-1774,London

1813, p.948.



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was no intention ofabandoning British legal rights is evident fromthe fact that Lieutenant Clayton, to whom it fell to dismantle theestablishment ofPort Egmont on 22 May, left behind an inscriptionon a lead plaque which read: The isles of Falkland and the Fort,Magazine, Quays, Bays and Creeks belong by unique right to

GeorgeIII. Hence this

plaqueis fixed as a

symbol of possession bySamuel William Clayton, officer commanding Falkland islands,1774.25 The language is that of the naval officer rather than the

diplomat, but the intention behind it is clear enough, perhapsclearer than had it been a diplomat who wrote it.

Even so, the story has its contradictions. Sixteen years later,on 28 October 1790, Britain and Spain concluded the so-calledNootka Sound Convention,Article VI ofwhich stated that neither

party was to make any settlement on the east or west coasts ofSouthAmerica or adjacent islands.Although this could refer to

anynew settlement, de Bernhardt, in the Foreign Office memorandumreferred to, bluntly affirms that by thisArticle it is evident thatGreat Britain was precluded from occupying any part of the

Falkland Islands.26 The Convention was abrogated in October1795, when Spain declared war against Britain, but was revived by

Article I of theAdditionalArticles to the Treaty of Friendship andAlliance between Britain and Spain signed in Madrid on 28

August 1814. The bearing of the Convention and its later historyon the British occupation ofthe islands after 1833 is yet another ofthe many unanswered questions surrounding the Falklands.

III

After the evacuation of Port Egmont in 1774, the Britishconnection with the Falklands was severed for almost sixty years.During that time Britain rose to the summit of world power;France underwent revolution and then defeat in a war which

ravaged Europe for twenty-three years; and the Spanish empire intheAmericas all but disappeared and in its place new nationalstates, the futureArgentina among them, came to birth with British

encouragement. When the European Great Powers of the HolyAlliance made gestures of intention to restore Spanish and

Portuguese rule in theAmericas after Napoleons defeat atWaterloo, the infant United Stateswarned them offby promulgatingthe Monroe Doctrine in 1823. But that was possible, not becuasePresident Monroe disposed of the military capability to make hiswarnings credible, but because Britain, which controlled com-

25Recueil de Traits des Puissances et tats de lEurope, par G.F. de Martens, Tome II,1771-1779, Gottingen, 1817, p. 4.26Op. cit.



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munications across theAtlantic, had determined that the end of

European rule in the New World was to be permanent.It is a curious fact that, although the United States has a long

tradition of opposition to British imperial expansion, when that

expansion was in full vigourAmerican policies, whether inten-

tionally or not, have often served to help it forward. The MonroeDoctrine was of some assistance to Britain in protecting South

America against the HolyAlliances efforts to restore Spanish and

Portuguese rule there. It was the same again in the early 1830s,when the United States navy intervened to prevent the Buenos

Aires authorities turning the Falklands into an exclusive zone forthemselves, and thus paved the way for the establishment of a

century and a half of British government in the islands. The

circumstances were that, as recounted earlier, the United Provincesbestowed on Louis Vernet the title of Political and MilitaryGovernor of the islands in 1829, evoking Woodbine Parishsprotest. On 31 July 1831 Vernet ordered the seizure of three

American ships which he claimed had violated the UnitedProvinces territorial waters surrounding theFalklands to hunt forseals. The regime in BuenosAires claimed that their rights toregulate seal hunting had been inherited from Spain on the

principle of uti possidetis, according to which entitlements toterritory are said to inhere in those who possess it.2

The United States reaction was an angry one: it was conveyedto the BuenosAires authorities by theAmerican consul, GeorgeW. Slacum. But theAmericans did not confine themselves to

words. In the gun-boat tradition familiar to nineteenth-centuryEuropean history, the United States ship Lexington was sent toshow the flag in the River Plate and her captain, Silas Duncan,afterwards instituted a raid on Puerto de la Soledad, the Republics

strongpointin

BerkeleySound in East Falkland. It was in this

context that in September 1832 the United Provinces Government

appointed Juan Mestivier to succeed Vernet. Mestivier sailed at theend of 1832 in the vessel Sarandi to take charge of the penalsettlement which the authorities had established at San Carlos in

East Falkland. There then occurred a mutiny in the forces underMestiviers command and he was murdered. In the resultingm~16e, the British sloop Clio arrived on 3 January 1833 at the

principal United Provinces settlement, Puerto de la Soledad,which, it will be remembered, had been the old French colonycalled Port Louis, hauled down theArgentinian flag and hoistedthe Union Jack. The Clios captain, J.J. Onslow, maintained that

27 The relevant correspondence between the United States and BuenosAires is

published in BFSP, 1833-34

,

Vol XXII, pp. 311-461.



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the Falklands were res nullius, nobodys property, and therefore

open to occupation by the British, or, as we would say today,up for grabs.

_

Captain Onslow did not appear to claim in these early daysthat his seizure of the port was in conformity with long-standing

British sovereign rights, though this was forcefully maintainedwhen the scene of theArgentinian complaint was transferred toLondon. In defending his action, Onslow explained that he hadbeen directed by the Commander-in-Chief of his Britannic

Majestys ships and vessels of war, SouthAtlantic station, toexercise the right of sovereignty over those islands .21 There was,again, no explicit reference to Britains claim to have been

sovereign in the islands since at least the mid-1760s. Further, in

replying on 17 January to the complaint of the Minister of Graceand Justice in BuenosAires, Manuel Vicente de Maza, about

Captain Onslows taking possession of La Soledad and hisdemand for explanations, the British Charge dAffaires in Buenos

Aires, Philip Gore, said he had received no instructions from hiscourt to make any communication to the government of Buenos

Aires upon the subject to which his excellencys note refers.29 The

impression remains that the British authorities had not yet fullyworked out the legal basis for their actions, and this suggests thatthe despatch of the Clio to take possession of La Soledad was

precipitated by the storm which had blown up between Washingtonand BuenosAires. The United States, however, showed no wish toinvolve themselves in the resulting British dispute with Buenos

Aires. They made no protest against Captain Onslows action.TheArgentinians, finding no satisfaction from Gore, moved

their protests to London, using for their purposes their Ministerthere, Don Manuel Moreno. In expostulating to Viscount Palmerston,the

Foreign Secretary,on 17 June

againstthe

alleged expulsionof

the United Provinces from part ofits territory, Moreno concentratedon the supposed secret understanding of January 1771, in virtueof which Great Britain was pledged to restore the Islands to Spainat a subsequent period: the evacuation by the British of theFalklands in 1774, Moreno said, was the fulfilment ofthat pledge.

As evidence for this, the envoy cited the reservation as to the

former right of sovereignty in the Spanish declaration of 1771, bywhich Port Egmont was handed back to Britain, and what hecalled the concurrent description of the Transaction as it took

place between the Parties given in Certain Documents andHistorical Works.After that cryptic allusion, nothing further was28 Ibid, 1832-1833, Vol XX p. 1197.29

Ibid, p. 1198.



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said on the point. 30It was unfortunate for Moreno, in giving this version of what

passed between the British and Spain in 1771, that he had in hispossession no documentation from the Spanish side. It is in factremarkable that Morenos protests to Britain about the events in

the Falklands of January 1833 seem to have received no support orassistance in the preparation of documents from Madrid. It was as

though the Spanish authorities had no wish to involve themselvesin the dispute. However that maybe, Morenos argument, deprivedof any documentary basis for his claim that in 1771 Britain hadsurrendered all title to sovereignty, self-evidently answered itself

Perhaps this is one reason why Palmerston, not the most tolerantof British nineteenth-century statesmen in dealing with foreigners,took so long to deliver his riposte. It was not until 8 January ofthe

following year, six months after theArgentinian protest, that the

Foreign Secretary returned an answer bearing all the marks of hisdominating personality.

Palmerston

(orrather

perhapsthe officials who drafted the

document) began with a complaint of his own, by remindingMoreno that his masters in BuenosAires had never replied to the

protest of Parish in 1829 against the United Provinces appointmentof a Political and Military Governor for the Falklands. The main

body of the note, however, was a crushing rejection of thecontention that when the British withdrew from Port Egmont in1774, it signified an intention to abandon sovereignty. The marksand signs of possession and of property left upon the islands, the

imperial language declared, the British Flag still flying and all theother formalities observed upon the departure of the Governor,were calculated, not only to assert the rights of ownership, but toindicate the intention of resuming the occupation of the Territory

atsome

future period. Moreno might have interposed at this pointthat the future period referred to could not have been very clearlyenvisaged if sixty years had to elapse before the resumption. Thewithdrawal of 1774. Palmerstons reply then continued, could notinvalidate the just right of Great Britain because that withdrawaltook place only in pursuance of the system of retrenchment

adopted at that time by His Majestys Government.As for the

alleged secret understanding made so much of by Moreno (and inhis book on the subject by Dr Goebel), Palmerston was able to

exploit perhaps the most handsome opportunity ever offered to a

diplomatic agent by saying that he had caused an inspection ofthe British archives to be made and no trace of such an under-

30 BFSP, 1833-1834, Vol XXII, p. 1386.



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standing could be found.31 It rested with Moreno to scour thearchives in Madrid (or Paris, since the French were said to havebeen party to it). With his failure or inability to do so, the disputefor all practical purposes came to an end. Moreno had another tryto argue the point in 1834, and again to LordAberdeen, the Foreign

Secretary in Sir Robert Peels second government, in January 1841.On 29 December, after almost another years delay,Aberdeen toldhim that his note had been passed to the appropriate department,from which it never seems to have emerged. ,

By February 1842, Moreno had come to realise that the secret

understanding thesis was leading nowhere. In a further note to the

Foreign Office on the 19th, he was writing that, with regard to the

alleged SecretAgreement of 1771 concerning the total evacuationof the islands by Great Britain which had been quoted by the

Argentinian Government in their protestof 1833, he now expressedhis willingness to retract that quotation from motives of respectforHMG seeing that, after examining the BritishArchives, it wassaid that the allegation was doubtful.32 The correspondence,

entirely half-hearted on the British side, petered out in March1842, was briefly revived in 1849, then suffered a lapse of almost

forty years until 1884, from which time it was intermittentlyresuscitated until just before the First World War.

IV

What the historical record appears to show is that the British

involvement in the Falkland Islands in the years after 1833 had on

the whole a respectable, though by no means unassailable, basis in

legitimacy, and that Dr Goebels thesis that in 1771 the Britishauthorities gave a clear undertaking to relinquish their sovereigntyis not proven. It might be added that Goebels argument to the

contrary falls far short of the standards of exact scholarship to befound in the rest of the book. Hence his conclusion, forming thefinal words of the treatise, that the law which states have sopainstakingly wrought to govern their relations is too precious a

heritage to be suborned to cover the imperialistic designs of anynation, smacks more of political partisanship than it does ofhistorical research.33 If one were, in the spirit of advocatus diaboli,to argue theArgentinian case for sovereignty in the islands, it

might be better to criticise the British claim to sovereign rightsbefore 1771 than to make the spurious allegation that these rightswere abandoned in 1771.

31 Ibid, pp. 1384-86.32 Bernhardt, op. cit., p. 55.33

Goebel, p. 468.



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It would, however, be unwise to be too glib in taking for

granted the strength ofthe British claim. Professor James Fawcett,for instance, is surely too categorical in stating that the territorialtitle to the islands ... must be accorded to the United Kingdom.34During the effort to recover the Falklands for Britain in the early

summer of 1982, it was naturally assumed as a matter of course thatlegal right lay wholly on the British side and legal wrong wholly ontheArgentinian: it is hard to ask men to fight and die if in the heatof battle there is not enough sense of right to justify the struggle.Nevertheless, we have shown in this article that there are questionmarks attaching to the British position (what countrys case ininternational disputation is ever without spot?). It would be well tobear these in mind in any future dealings on the subject with

Argentinaand in the inevitable United Nations debates which willfollow. The comment of the then Permanent Under-Secretary atthe Foreign Office (Sir Charles Hardinge) on Gaston de Bemhardtspaper of 1910 is a fair one: from a perusal of this memorandum itis difficult to avoid the conclusion that theArgentinian Governmentsattitude is not altogether unjustified and that our action has beensomewhat high-handed. Hardinge added the prophetic wordsthat &dquo;whatever we may have said at different times, theArgentinianGovernment do not regard this question as closed

There is, of course, a further dimension to the controversyover the Falkland Islands which a historical account ofthe British

acquisition ofthe territory in 1833 and the subsequent diplomaticexchanges about it does not bring to light, and that consists of the149 years of undisturbed, though not unquestioned, Britishoccupation and administration since that time. This Britishconnection with the islands has been recognised as legitimate bythe greater part of the international community. It provided the

justificationfor the United Nations

SecurityCouncils Resolution

502 which called onArgentina to withdraw the forces she sent tothe islands on 2April 1982, the implication being that that actionwas an infringement of the territorial rights of another state. Thiscentury and a half of settled government cannot in itself retro-

spectively legitimise the British act of force in taking control of theFalklands in 1833. Moreover, there has entered into the disputesince 1833 the vast and cloudy principle of national self-deter-mination, the exact application of which to the Falkland Islands

question is not at once clear to the detached observer, but which isbound to figure prominently in the forthcoming debates in the

34 Joan Pearce, The Falkland Islands Dispute: International Dimensions, The RoyalInstitute of InternationalAffairs, London, 1982, p. 6.

35 FO 371/824/44753/10549.



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United Nations and other fora. This article is not concerned with

these aspects of the dispute, but rather with the question of howBritain came to be involved in the Falkland Islands and the

different justifications her spokesmen have put forward for-thatinvolvement. These aspects will need to be taken into account as

theBritish

peopleand their Government

ponderthe sort

ofcommitment to the islands which they will undertake in the future.